WARWICKSHIRE go in to a vital championship clash with Yorkshire today aiming to bank some happy memories of Scarborough to block out the nightmares of 2006 and 2007.

North Marine Road, one of the most famous and historic venues in first-class cricket, has hosted wonderful occasions and great feats for more than a century. But it not always been kind to the Bears.

Those last two visits brought ignominious, three-day innings defeats under Mark Greatbatch.

A little further back, when Dennis Amiss played his last first-class match there in 1987, he bagged a golden duck in the first innings and lasted just three balls in the second.

It was not all doom and gloom in that match, mind you. Tim Munton, sent in as nightwatchman, batted for three and a half hours in a sterling display of fortitude and defiance. Against one of the teams right alongside them down there in the relegation scrap, that is the sort of resilience that Warwickshire need to display this week.

England’s ODI in Ireland tomorrow deprives Yorkshire of Tim Bresnan and Adil Rashid and the Bears of Jonathan Trott but Ian Bell returns to bolster Warwickshire’s misfiring top order. The ballast of Bell, who has rarely failed for his county this season, is hugely welcome.

Last week’s eight-wicket defeat to Durham at The Riverside well and truly sucked Warwickshire into the thick of a relegation dogfight.

It also stirred ominous memories of a similar beating there in 2007 which accelerated Warwickshire’s spiral towards relegation.

Those who believe in omens will have further noted that relegation that season was confirmed by defeat to Lancashire in the last match at Old Trafford – which is where the Bears finish their campaign again next month.

While Bell is back at number three, the bowling attack also sees a change as Neil Carter returns in place of Boyd Rankin who tweaked a groin while registering his first five-for for the Bears at Durham.

With a poor weather forecast for today and a mixed one for the rest of the week it could be difficult for either side to do better than a draw which would do neither much good. But Warwickshire are under pressure. They have rock-bottom Worcestershire at Edgbaston next week but, even assuming they win that game, might need to win one of their other three, at Scarborough, Hove or Old Trafford, to stay up.